Deck Requirements

“I’ve always considered myself to be just average talent and what I have is a ridiculous insane obsessiveness for practice and preparation.” – Will Smith

Your pitchdeck should meet the following requirements:

Be able to stand on its own. While you don’t want to include ideas and numbers that aren’t relevant to right now, it should be the guts of your business. You shouldn’t have to whip out appendixes and other resources to communicate what investors want to hear.

Concise. Investors are busy people. Keep it between 10-13 slides.

Accurate. If estimations are made (market size, customer demand, projected overheads, etc) they must be conservative. Investors will be able to suss out if you’re inflating numbers, and even if they don’t it will be awkward down the line when these don’t match up.

Who are these investors?

Literally anyone:

Venture capital investors

Angel investors

Friends

Friends-of-friends

Family members

Co-workers

People you meet at networking events

Others who are drawn to your concept

Do some research and make a list of all your potential investors, then contact them and set up a time to meet.

Knowing a bit about their personality and what they’ve previously invested in will equip you for how you should pitch to them. Are they highly professional or a more down to earth, hoodie-wearing type?

Regardless, be professional and sincere, and tell them (either via email or over the phone) that you have a business opportunity that you’d like to run by them.

DON’T share your idea over the phone.

You want to provide investors with as little information as possible while still sounding enticing.

Otherwise you’ll be forced to start your pitch over the phone, and this is way too restrictive.

If you’re really prodded for details, tell them the industry your startup is going to disrupt or the current gap in the market.

Creating your Pitch deck

Here’s the template we give our clients to help them write a simple pitchdeck. It should be a maximum of 13 slides – we’re all busy!

Let’s get straight into it.

1. Vision

This is your mission, your business’ ‘reason for being’. It should be no more than 30-45 seconds.

Mitchell Harper, co-founder of Big Commerce, advises you should take your vision and make it 10 times bigger. Is your current vision to serve every target in your country? Expand it to serve EVERY country.

2. Traction/Validation

You’ve just opened by talking ideas. Now you need to show that you’re grounded in reality, and you do that by throwing investors social proof and data.

Start by selling your team.

The team

The team is one of the fundamentals of the business. A good idea and a great team will always win out over a great idea and a mediocre team.

“We start with the people first. We think the ideas that entrepreneurs start with evolve and sometimes end up unrecognizable, so we believe in investing in the people,” – Ron Conway, angel investor of Google, Twitter, Square and PayPal, and general boss.

Your team includes a profile on you and your business partner(s) – the founders, as well as the rest of your staff.

It should detail WHY you are investment-worthy. What skills do you have to make this plan a reality? How many combined years of experience do you have?

What have you done in the past to prove you’re qualified to start your own business?

Moving past the founders, what makes the rest of your team so special? Why did you choose them? How do they round off your team’s skills and experience, or what connections/clients do they bring?

This is actually a great exercise to do when putting together your team in the first place – it forces you to be objective and think about your team as a whole rather than as silos. What skills/experience does the next hire need to round out your startup machine?

This takes out any nepotism or bias towards friends and family in your hiring process.

Here’s what our clients use for Buzinga when pitching to investors:

Who is your team?

Buzinga App Development

Why have you chosen them?

Previous expertise in successfully building, launching and consulting for successful startups. They have the ability to connect us with further funding opportunities and mentoring with incubators/investors post launch.

What have they done in the past to warrant you choosing them?

Featured in Business Insider, Prime 7, Shoestring, Startup Smart…

Crowd Mobile IP acquired for $12m @ $2.5m annual revenue

Built 2 apps that have hit #1 App on the App Store

Helped clients raise in excess of $10,600,000 in funding

The next thing you need to include in this section is your key numbers.

Explicitly say what you are looking for from THAT investor specifically, and at what cost per share.

Show that you have a plan for how you’re going to handle that investor’s money. List in dot points the break down of where that investor’s money will be going, as well as what will happen to it if you can’t raise the full amount you need.

After that, open up the floor for final questions.

You must be ready for EVERY question. Have numbers ready at the drop of a hat.

You need to know your stuff, because nothing looks worse than “Wait a minute, I have it in an email somewhere…”

You’ll find after you’ve done a few pitches that some questions will be coming up more than once.

This is great – it means you can add this to your pitch deck and refine it to better meet investors’ needs.

Finish your pitch by asking investors to consider your proposal, leave them with an ‘information pack’ (it can just be a print out of your slides) and tell them you’ll follow up with them in the next few days.

Follow up

Follow up the same night with a thank you email (or SMS if you think it’s appropriate).

2 days later, follow up with a phone call to close if they haven’t already contacted you.

Be clear and concise in the phone call that you’re asking for more than an indication of interest.

“Hi Anne, just giving you a call back about the discussion we had the other day to see if you had any questions? Can I get a commitment from you?”

They might say maybe, but don’t stop at maybes.

Keep following up and providing them with more data, answering all their questions and rigorously negotiating until you get a firm YES or NO.

If you are lucky enough to get a yes (here’s hoping!), these are the criteria you should use as a checklist when considering a potential investor:

Desired level of involvement

Desired level of control

Diversity – you want investors with complementary skill sets

Level of compatibility with your goals, personality and business interests.

Important things to remember…

1. Just be you. But better yet, be better than you – be your best self. You need to be:

Passionate

Knowledgeable – as if you’ve thought this through

Personable

Professional (but not over the top)

Confident

Committed – you’re not going to go back to your old job at the first sign of slowing revenue

Logan Merrick is the co-founder and Director of Buzinga, as well as one of Australia's most recognised entrepreneurs, keynote speakers, investors and mentors. His writing on startups, technology and mobile marketing has been featured in The Australian, Business Insider, Startup Smart, Smart Company, and more.